The Kitchen Staple That Can Add Extra Storage To Your Bedroom Closet

Part of the fun of repurposing household items is turning something that's meant for one purpose into something entirely unexpected. Take your average paper towel rack. It's a kitchen gadget that holds your paper towel rolls, but really, that's not the only function for it. As it turns out, the dowel part of the apparatus is just the thing you need to help you organize that pile of belts on the floor of your bedroom closet. 

To get started on your repurposed paper towel holder project, you can use an old holder you've been storing in your kitchen cabinets, or plan a trip to your local second-hand store or garage sale to pick up a paper towel holder. If you find a rack that would work but you don't like the look of it, a coat of paint gives it a new look. This is a particularly handy option if it looks a bit beat up. As for the paint itself, you might try one of the textured spray paints that create a hammered iron texture, like this Rust-Oleum Hammered Spray Paint, which can give your kitchen a modern industrial look. Just be sure to allow the paint to dry before adding your belts to the rack.

To do this project, start with a paper towel rack that stands on a single base (as opposed to the kind that flanks a roll of paper towels like a set of ear muffs). To store the belts, roll them up in a tight coil and push the end of the coil into the belt buckle to keep the bundle rolled tight.

For belts that make a bigger coil, some reinforcement might be needed to keep the coil wrapped up tight. A large but loose rubber band around the bundle would keep things in place. A band that's too tight might cut into the belt's material, so make sure that the grip from the band is tight enough to keep the coil in place but loose enough to prevent it from marring up the belt.

Finally, leave a hole in the center of each belt bundle that is big enough to allow the coiled belt to fit around the dowel of the paper towel rack. Slide them onto the dowel, one on top of the other, for easy and organized storage.

Although stacking the belts on a standing towel rack works, there is a drawback to the method. If you want a belt that's at the bottom or the middle of the stack, you have to remove all of the other belts that are stacked on top of it before you can reach the belt you want. If that's the case, you'll want to work with a wall-mounted towel rack and some S-hooks.

Many paper towel racks are already designed to hang from the wall or from a spot under the bottom of the cupboard. In your closet, this translates as a paper towel rack that's hung from the bottom of a high shelf in the closet, from one of the walls, or even from one of the doors, provided that the doors open out (as opposed to being sliders).

Once the paper towel rack is mounted, slide some large S-hooks, like these KEEPFFYE S Hooks, onto the rack's dowel. Instead of coiling up the belts, hook the buckle of each of the belts to the bottom of one of the S-hooks. This allows the belts to hang on the hooks rather than being stacked on top of each other. To prevent the S-hooks from sliding off the dowel as you move the belts around, fasten a garden clip or a clothespin to the end of the dowel. The big benefit of this DIY closet organization rack hack is that you can access the belt you want without having to move all of the others first.